aurora: Jupiter

Jupiter’s auroral arcs at its north and south poles, as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope between May 1994 and September 1995. The false-colour ultraviolet images (bottom) follow changes in brightness and structure of the auroras, caused by interaction of particles in Jupiter’s atmosphere and the planet’s magnetic field, as Jupiter rotates. The offset between the planet’s rotational and magnetic axes is apparent. In the top images, taken in visible and ultraviolet light (left and right, respectively), the path of the magnetic flux tube, or current of charged particles, that links Jupiter and its moon Io is traced with an added line. In the top left image, Io appears as a faint dot on the trace near the plane of Jupiter’s equator.